Richland Man's Interest In Weeds Nothing To Sneeze At

The next time you bend over to yank out the weeds that have bloomed amid your violets, think of Robert Thayer.

And when your eyes water while walking through a windy meadow, just remember Thayer may want to know where that field is located.

The 70-year-old Richland Township man wants those weeds. While most people might think they are roadside eyesores or garden pests, Thayer looks at them more as blooming gold.

Thayer grows weeds. He has 10 acres of them on his Muskrat Road farm. And together with three of his grandchildren, Thayer has developed a lucrative business raising weeds, processing them into colorful dried ornaments and selling them to retail and wholesale flower distributors.

"The county agent can't figure out why I plant weeds and harvest them while other farmers are trying to get rid of them," he says. "Nobody else sells them."

Thayer declines to disclose what sort of volume his weed-growing business does. He says, though, that his harvests are in constant demand and he often has trouble filling orders.

There is, he says, a definite market for weeds.

Thayer has been in the weed business for more than 40 years. Working as a vegetable farmer years ago, Thayer started cultivating weeds so he could have a business to tend during the winter months.

He picked his own weed seeds, planted them on his 150-acre farm and harvested them in the summer. When the vegetable crop was in, Thayer turned to processing the weeds. He dried them, bleached and dyed the weeds and found some ornamental flower suppliers who were interested.

Within 15 years the weeds became more profitable than the vegetables. He virtually went out of vegetable growing and has concentrated for the past 25 years strictly on teasel, foxtail, brown burr, pepper grass and assorted other weeds.

Today, several of the Thayer farm's buildings are devoted to storing and processing bundles upon bundles of weeds. A sign posted at the entrance of his farm tells the visitor he has arrived at the "Thayer Weed Shop."

Thayer says he can't find enough weeds. He hires high school students to pick them in Upper Bucks fields; he has traveled as far away as Texas in search of them, and he grows as many as he can on his farm.

"Foxtail is a weed that's around here a lot," he says. "It comes up in everybody's garden and everybody wants to get rid of it."

Brown burr, according to Thayer, can be found in good abundance around the Pennridge Airport. Wild yarrow is so plentiful that he never has to grow it himself.

Pepper grass is long and straw-like with flaky tips.

"It's no good for anything but what I use it for, but it's hard to raise. I drive all over the country looking for it," he says.

Goldenrod is misunderstood. Most people blame it for allergic attacks, he says, but the weed contains no pollen.

"Girls and boys pick it for me for 20 cents a bunch. I can use thousands of bunches of goldenrod," Thayer says. "We've got people educated to it now. We sell an awful lot of goldenrod."

Grapevine has been particularly popular lately. Although not considered a weed, Thayer says it grows wild so it could sprout up most anywhere.

Thayer has the grapevine wrapped in wreaths and baskets. He says they become attractive pieces when silk flowers are sewn in.

Thayer's favorite weeds?

"It's pepper grass and goldenrod," he says. "But the teasel is also beautiful. And they're all weeds."

Thayer uses more than 20 different dyes to color the plants. When he holds up several colors together it is clear they form an attractive bouquet.

Thayer will soon turn over the business to a grandson. He doesn't travel on weed searches as much as he used to, and he enjoys keeping the business a family-oriented operation.

Nevertheless, Thayer says his weeds continue to be an interesting and lucrative business.

He says, "I'm the largest grower of weeds anywhere around that I've ever heard of."